


not gonna kill you

by lark_song



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, F/M, One Shot, Unresolved Sexual Tension, as in: jaime is THE stranger, stranger!jaime, the author also has no idea how to tag SORRY, the author lives to write dialogue and pretty much nothing else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27951539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lark_song/pseuds/lark_song
Summary: Jaime is the Stranger. He takes Brienne on a road trip.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 43
Kudos: 173





	not gonna kill you

**Author's Note:**

> hello again!
> 
> i originally planned on posting this next week. a more disciplined writer/human would have spent that time fleshing out this world, etc. alas, i am not that writer/human, so—posting this now so that i can get started on the arranged marriage sci-fi AU that has been gnawing at my brain for the last few days 😬
> 
> if you've found your way here from 'nontradtional,' this is... very different! hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway.
> 
> un-beta'd, so please excuse any errors/weird verb tense usage. also, his name is not used, but for clarity: yes, this is stranger!jaime. i know jaime is typically portrayed as the warrior (or sometimes the maiden), which i *love*, but i have a lot of thoughts about the parallels between our boy jam and the stranger (which is why i wrote this in the first place).
> 
> there's a little bit of smut in this, but it's very mild (imo). also, i've never written smut before so... be gentle with me? lol
> 
> this fic is weird. i had a good time writing it anyway.
> 
> title lifted from the angel olsen song because my gay lil heart will love angel 'til the day i die—but not because i was listening to it while i was writing. if you'd like to know what my playlist for this fic looked like, i'd be happy to tell ya!

“There’s a price, you know.”

Brienne looked up from her laptop and set it down beside her on the bed. Across her studio apartment, he stretched languidly across the deep green sofa, his back to the south-facing bay window. The bay window was the reason she’d signed the lease on the studio in the first place: bright, vivid light that would fill her apartment for as long as the sun soared through the sky. Seemed rather silly now, when daylight stretched for minutes, not hours.

“For what?” She asked, knowing she would have been better off staying silent.

“Everything. All of it.” He replied as he slowly ran his fingers along the orange peel texture of the white wall up against which she’d shoved the sofa. “There’s a debt. They’re here to collect.”

With a snort, Brienne swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood. Stifled a yawn as she stretched her arms up toward the ceiling. She crossed the room and turned toward the window, watching the vacant black sky. If she stared at the water—just the water—she could almost pretend it was the starlight reflected upon the rippling waters of Blackwater Bay, and not the artificial, twinkling light cast by buildings full of other people trying, just like her, to pretend nothing was amiss.

Brienne focused on the water for a beat, then two. Back up at the empty sky. She heard a soft rustling behind her as he raised himself from the couch. That was for her benefit, she knew; he could move in silence when he chose.

He came to stand behind her, peering over her shoulder, close enough that she’d have felt the heat radiating off his body were he human. Which he wasn’t. She had to remind herself of that often.

She wasn’t even sure he was what he said he was, or that he was really there. She wouldn’t be the first person to go a bit mad at the end of the world.

They were almost of a height. She had three, maybe four, inches on him. She might have marveled at the lack of vanity in a man— _not a man_ —who could change his appearance at will and still chose to be towered over by a woman, but the rest of him— thick burnished gold curls that brushed his shoulders, wicked and preternaturally green eyes, the sharp angles of his symmetrical face—spoke to an abundance of vanity, not the absence of it.

Did the gods know shame? Had they any need of it?

“You creatures invented shame.” The hairs on her arms stood on end. She hated when he did that—reminded her that nothing, not even her thoughts, were unknown to the gods. “We had nothing to do with it.”

“I read an article that said this is all because of an abnormal weather pattern. They said whatever’s blotting out the light will eventually rain down on us,” she said, eyes on the sky. Thick, oozing, inky black. She missed the stars.

He trailed one hand along the expanse of her shoulders as he stepped away, toward the kitchen.

“Poison won’t rain down from the sky. It trickles down from the North.”

Brienne turned from the window, shifted to lean against the wall. He perched himself atop the breakfast bar that separated her small kitchen from the rest of the living space, legs swinging lazily back and forth. His gaze burned her.

He was dangerous, and beautiful; and she wanted him. The fact that _she_ knew that _he_ knew made it all the worse. One of a handful of mortifying things left unspoken between them.

“Those are just stories,” she replied.

“They’re not. You know that.”

She groaned as she pushed away from the wall. Paced between the window, the bed, and the sofa, gearing up for the same argument they’d had every day for the past two months. “If they’re not _just_ stories, if something is coming—”

“Oh, plenty of things are coming, believe you me.” He deadpanned, a lascivious smirk on his face that she did her best not to notice. “Doomsday urges and all that. Very powerful.”

Brienne scrubbed a hand over her face. “Tell me what to do.” She said, turning her face to look at him. His expression was unsurprised. “Please,” she added.

“Not my domain.” He shrugged. “There are rules.” Petulant.

Her father and Galladon died in quick succession—eighteen months between them. Her world grew small. The rise and fall of the sun became erratic. Her world grew smaller still. She'd wanted something for herself—wanted to _take_ , for once.

People avoided his shrine. She had, too, for most of her life. Until the day she hadn’t.

Her septa must have been convulsing beneath the earth on the day Brienne summoned him. That alone was enough to make her smile.

One year ago, she beckoned; he answered. He stayed.

The fact of his staying didn’t mean he would help her. Brienne couldn’t say _why_ he’d stuck around, but it certainly wasn’t to make her life easier.

She’d called for the Stranger, and there he was: critiquing her home décor and distracting her when she wanted to read and igniting some torturous, wonderful ache in her belly every time he looked at her. He really was beautiful. He really was terrible.

The whole thing was enough to make her laugh; the whole thing was enough to make her scream; she did neither. It was a close call, though.

“ _Rules_?” she repeated, incredulous at the implication that he abided by any rules whatsoever, full stop.

“Maybe not rules, but the old bastards don’t like when we Seven infringe on their territory. And they do have so little territory left to them these days.”

He hopped down from the breakfast bar, all unburdened grace.

“Far be it from me to deny them another reason to scorn me, but…”

“But what?”

“Well it’s a bit boring, really. The things you creatures concern yourselves with. Life. What is it about _this_ part that’s so worth saving, anyway? Things get far more interesting once you shuffle off the old mortal coil, I promise you.” He edged toward her, taunting. Tempting.

She took a step back toward the center of the room. The same dance as always.

“Won’t you be out of a job once you run out of people to shepherd into the afterlife?”

“Not the afterlife,” he reminded her, an imperious arch in his brow. Death was not the end of life. Just the abstraction of it. What comes next. “And you’d be surprised—plenty of ways to keep busy in the other place.”

“You’re really not going to help me?”

“No point. You creatures need magic to face what’s coming down, and there’s not enough of it left in this world.”

“There has to be some way to bring it back! _You’re_ here, aren’t you? And—there are children, and people who aren’t _finished_ —”

“And they’ll all be perfectly content in the other place. I could take you there now, if you like. You could see for yourself.” Another step toward her.

Brienne exhaled through her nostrils forcefully.

“I’m out of eggs,” she grumbled, shouldering past him into the small hallway off the kitchen, and then out the front door.

She let the door slam shut behind her, knowing she only had minutes—if not seconds—before he reappeared at her side. Hateful bastard.

∆ ∆ ∆

She didn’t know why he'd come she called. He never gave a direct answer, never clarified if it was the candles (three of them: one for her parents; a second for Galladon; and the last one for—him) or the words that drew him in. But the way it happened was this:

A mug—rust-colored ceramic glaze, rather plain. It was only a mug, until the day that it wasn’t.

When Brienne’s father died, it fell on her to clean out the house. To turn it into a blank slate, ready to receive more memories for other people to forget. When she got to the kitchen cupboards, she saw the mug. She remembered it always being there. She thought, maybe my mother once drank her tea from this very mug.

Whether or not her mother ever actually used the mug was, and would always be, a mystery to Brienne. She remembered so little of her, and had even less to remember her by.

But she remembered her mother drinking tea. Every morning. She remembered the mug being, if not in her mother’s hand, then at least in the house. And so it became her mother’s mug.

She took it home. Two years later, which was six months after Galladon died, she dropped it.

It shattered.

This was the last straw, the final cosmic injustice in a long series of cosmic injustices that had come to define her recent experience: the loss of her father; the loss of her brother; assholes on the bus who compared her to a cow, and then tried to palm her ass anyway; the luxury hotel, with the restaurant that did not list prices on its menus, just one block away from the mutual aid cooperative’s food bank, where there was never enough food, where there was always, on the other side of the table, another person’s face crumpling in distress.

The shattered mug.

She hadn’t planned on going to the sept, but there she’d found herself all the same.

It was one of those new age-y septs, its altars left in the open air, smack dab in the middle of a park. The sun was out for almost six hours that day; the experts on the television screen and in the papers hadn’t yet declared it winter, just an unusual weather pattern. Nothing to fret overly much about, they'd said. The maesters are on it, they'd said.

There was no one else at his altar. Only her. She lit the candles; she said the words.

Nothing happened. She went home.

She had just finished sweeping up the remains of the mug from which her mother might or might not have once liked to sip her tea when he spoke, his voice soft, yet somehow booming, from the direction of the bay window.

“You forgot to light a candle for your poor, dead sisters. Tsk, tsk, wench.”

∆ ∆ ∆

He’d been with her for one year and two months when the sun did not rise.

Two days after that, the sun still did not rise. The moon hid. The stars turned away. The sky was empty.

Missives sent north went unanswered. Radio static from people who should have had answers. Talking heads on the television recited sweet assurances that the maesters were close to a solution, though no one—not even the maesters—had ever named the problem in need of such a solution. People went to work. Children went to school. Traffic from the morning commute remained brutal. South of the neck, it was easier to pretend.

“This is the Long Night, isn’t it?” She asked on day three, from under a nest of blankets in the middle of her bed. He settled next to her, leaning against her nest, and walked his fingers up the length of blankets that covered her thigh. He hummed his confirmation, not that Brienne needed it confirmed, or to have asked in the first place. But she was a child, and a fool, and she needed to hear it out loud.

“What can I do? There must be something. Tell me what to do.” She resented the pleading tone in her voice, resented the fact that he expected her to sit and do _nothing_ —that he was amused by it—resented being in this situation in the first place.

“It’s not your responsibility to fix this, wench. Even if you could,” he said, voice almost soft, “no one would thank you for it.”

They both knew she cared not at all for thanks, but they also both knew she would try to find a way with or without his help. She wondered if he was simply desperate to stop her. The idea pleased her—that he would be desperate in any regard where she was concerned. It felt akin to parity in their relationship.

Brienne spent more and more time in the bathroom, the only place in her studio from which she could not be taunted by the black sky outside her window. She cleaned obsessively, showered twice a day, plucked, exfoliated, scrubbed, brushed her teeth for twice as long as the maesters recommended. Tender gums did not distract her from the bleak darkness outside that damned bay window, but her teeth did gleam. It was something; marginally better than nothing.

On the fifth day without the sun, Brienne spent the better part of the afternoon soaking in the bathtub. It was almost big enough for her to recline fully—the _other_ reason she signed the lease on the studio.

When the water grew tepid, she lifted the drain cover with pruned fingers and let some of the water out; turned the hot water knob as far as it would go and refilled the tub for the third time.

She kept the shower curtain drawn; he had a habit of hovering even when she bathed, and she didn’t want to know what expression he would wear when he looked upon her naked body. From time to time, she allowed herself to play out the scenario in her mind: how she would pull back the curtain, slowly, to reveal herself to him. How beads of water would roll down her neck and her clavicle and her breasts, clinging for a moment to her pink nipples before plopping back down into the tub. How her thighs would rub together beneath the gently lapping water. The slickness between them. How he would look at her. How she would look at him.

It might have been the heat, or the utter absurdity of the slow crawl toward the end of the world, or—and damn him (so to speak) for being right—the power of doomsday _urges_ , but soon she found herself slipping her hand between her thighs.

He was on the other side of the shower curtain, she knew it. She could sense him. The way the air came alive with electricity every time he was near. _Don’t think about it_ , she ordered herself, and then thought about it anyway as her fingers circled her clit.

“Wench. I know what you’re doing,” he said from the wrong side of the curtain, his voice rough and ringing through the quiet.

“Go. _Away_ ,” she bit out, but refused to stop. This was her space, her time. Her fingers coated in her own hot slickness, damn him.

Her hips lifted from the bottom of the tub—urgent, insistent. She trailed her other hand down her breastbone, between the ungenerous swell of her breasts, into the water and down her belly, past the hand stroking her clit and along the soft skin of her inner thigh. She swallowed back a moan as she thrust two fingers inside herself, curled them just so, and imagined they were his.

“Tell me.”

“W-What?” Pressure built deep within her. The fingers on her clit took on a clumsy, frantic rhythm. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub as she tried to find a better angle. Too much; not enough.

“Tell me how it feels. Tell me you wish I was the one touching you.” His voice sounded nearer than it had before. She didn’t speak, but she imagined his breath hot against her ear, his nose pressed against her sweaty temple. His fingers curling deep inside her, against the spot she couldn’t quite reach herself. And all the while, she knew _he_ knew the fantasies she entertained.

That sent her over the edge. She gasped as she came, legs trembling and cunt clenching around her fingers. In a few minutes, she would be mortified. For now, she focused on steadying her breathing and listened to her blood pulsing in her ears.

His low laughter filled the space, sending a shiver down her spine and reverberating through her sensitive center.

“Fuck you,” she hissed.

The metallic scrape of the shower curtain rings against the curtain rod snapped Brienne out of her post-orgasmic haze. She slammed her thighs together and threw an arm over her breasts as he peered down at her, eyes bright and lips pulled back into a smug, hungry grin. They held each other’s gaze for what felt, to Brienne, like an age.

She wanted to look away. She did not look away.

Finally: “If you’re done,” he raked his eyes over her naked skin, “you have somewhere to be.”

∆ ∆ ∆

“Drive north,” came his order from the passenger seat as she tossed a too-light duffel bag in the backseat of her car. “I’ll tell you when to pull over.”

She nodded mutely and wrenched open the car door, focused intently on every motion that went into buckling herself into the driver’s seat, starting the engine and turning on the headlights.

And resolutely _did not_ mention what happened in the bath.

“It would be much faster to take a plane, you know,” she groused as they pulled away from the curb. “Flights out of King’s Landing are still going as far as the Twins. I could rent a car from there.”

“No,” he replied. “Planes are crowded—you’ll look mad if you talk to me during a flight. We’d have to sit in silence for hours.”

“Exactly,” she mumbled under her breath.

“You wound me, wench. And here I thought you and I were coming to an understanding.”

For five minutes, they drove in silence. And then, “You put on a good show back there. Very scintillating. And all that steam… a case of the vapors, indeed.”

A vicious blush bloomed across Brienne’s chest, crawled up her neck and spread along her cheeks. She made a strangled noise and pressed her foot to the gas pedal, tearing through the streets of King’s Landing toward the northbound entrance to the King’s Road Expressway.

∆ ∆ ∆

They spent much of their first two months together needling each other.

One night—one particularly vicious night—he’d taken to mooing like a dairy cow every time she opened her mouth, and she made the mistake of commenting on his handsome appearance.

“Do you always look like—like— _that_?” she’d spat, giving him a once over.

“Why?” he’d asked, more curious than self-conscious. “Do you not like it, wench? Most do. It’s one of my favorites.”

Brienne scoffed, and turned away from him, toward the open fridge. “Just a bit predictable, isn’t it? Gods are always golden in all the tales,” she said, pulling a beer from the middle shelf.

By the time she’d turned around, beer in hand, he was right behind her. She pulled up short to avoid a collision.

“Not in the tales about me. But I can change, if you like. If you’d prefer something familiar.”

A flicker—like he was some distant mirage—and suddenly, he looked like Renly: slightly taller, jet black hair swooping prettily above storm blue eyes. Brienne nearly dropped her beer.

“That’s not funny.”

“Not to your liking, then? I can try again.” And then he was Galladon, looming over her with a smile that was wicked in a way the real Galladon’s smile had never been. Brienne yelped, and that time, she did drop her beer. It shattered on the floor like the mug that had compelled her to reach out to the Stranger in the first place, amber-colored liquid spreading slowly across the linoleum tile with a gentle fizzing sound.

“ _Stop that!_ ” she’d shrieked, tears prickling at the backs of her eyes.

He changed back immediately; wildfire green eyes clouded by—she assumed—regret. Brienne pushed past him, not even bothering to clean up the mess in the kitchen. She dropped down on the couch, propped her elbows on her knees and cradled her head in her hands. Focused on her breathing.

“I’m sorry.” He was perched beside her then, close but not close enough to touch her. “I am. I don’t why I… I’m sorry.”

She stared at her feet. The sting of her tears slowly receded.

“Do you hate me?” she’d asked, voice small.

He answered before she couldn’t finish her sentence, “No.”

“Then why? Why do you stick around here just to taunt me? You’re—you’re _cruel_. I don’t understand why.”

“I don’t know why. I don’t—it’s not because I don’t want to be here. Or because I don’t. Like you. I just… I don’t know what to do with you, Brienne.”

He sighed. “You creatures call out to _them_ constantly. Begging for mercy or wisdom or justice or favor. They give you a new toy or a new day, and you call it a prayer answered. But it’s all just a trick, meant to keep you all ensnared by their whims. It’s no gift. It’s not kindness. What I offer is—freedom. From the games we trap you in. And still, you creatures avert your eyes from me. It never bothered me before—you all learn the truth the gods keep from you eventually. Until… until you. You wanted _me_. You wanted me, but you’ve never asked me for anything. And I don’t know what to do with it.”

Brienne lifted her head from her hands and looked at him then. He looked—

Uncertain. Unmoored. Human, almost. It set her heart racing.

“You feel misunderstood,” she said.

One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry approximation of a smile. “In order to be misunderstood, one first has to be asked what they think. Or how they feel. No one’s ever asked me either of those things. They’re afraid to ask, or don’t see the need, because they think they have me figured out.”

All her life, Brienne had blamed him. Death. For all of it.

She’d thought she hated him, until she met him.

What she’d actually hated, she realized, were the empty spaces, the way she and other people could never fill them. She hated how she shrank herself to accommodate the growing emptiness.

She shifted closer to him, placed one hand over his where it rested on the couch cushion. For a moment it was all she could see: their hands, intertwined. Eventually, she tore her eyes away from their joined hands and chanced a glance at his face. He met her gaze. For a long time, they were silent.

Eventually, he leaned toward her. “Wench,” he whispered, “I’m going to kiss you now.” Struck dumb, all she could do was nod.

Until she remembered.

“Wait!” she’d cried, stopping him with a hand on his chest. “If—if you do… that, what happens?”

“You go to the other place. Obviously.” He quirked a brow, but didn’t move away. “Haven’t you heard of the Stranger’s kiss?”

She shot up from her seat, then took a step back.

“We can’t.”

“Why not? You’d like it there, I think. Much more interesting than _this_ place.”

Brienne shook her head. She thought of the sun, still rising and setting with an unpredictability that set her nerves on edge. She thought of strange, unconfirmed stories filtering down from the north, of the dead rising again to decimate the ones they’d loved in life. She thought of the heavy feeling in her stomach, the one that told her there was a part for her to play in all of it.

“I’m not ready. There’s—more for me to do here, I think.” He rolled his eyes.

“So be it,” he said, leaning back and smirking enticingly. “But when you’re ready, you tell me.”

∆ ∆ ∆

Snow started falling when they reached the Trident. By the time they reached the Neck, hours and hours later, Brienne couldn’t see more than five feet in front of her car with the low beams on. Just as well. So long as the snow near-blinded her, she didn’t have to look up at the empty sky menacing her from above.

“I should slow down,” she said for the thousandth time.

“Keep going. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He said, sounding bored about it.

Beneath his lazy tone was a fact they both knew but would not outright acknowledge: she was running out of time to do… whatever it was she was about to do. Fuck if she knew or understood any of this beyond the fire raging in her belly, propelling her forward, pushing her to face whatever was coming with her eyes open and a battle cry filling her lungs.

She grit her teeth, white-knuckled the steering wheel, and kept a lead foot on the gas. And thanked whichever gods— _not him_ —held dominion over this stretch of Westeros for four-wheel drive.

∆ ∆ ∆

Past Moat Cailin, past Winterfell, across the Last River, and deep into the wilds of the Gift, he instructed her to pull over. Four and a half days they had driven, a brutal crawl up the continent, kept going only by the canisters of gas with which she’d filled her trunk at the Twins.

“Why here?” She asked as she cut the engine.

“There’s a sword buried in these parts.” He leaned a hip against the trunk, arms crossed over his chest, and watched her clamber out of the car and into the biting cold. “You’ll have to go by foot from here. Bundle up—it’s a long walk. And wrap that scarf around your face, wench. Wouldn’t want to frighten the snarks and grumpkins.”

Brienne scowled, but did as he said.

Side by side, and with a shovel strapped to her back, they walked into the forest.

Each step was more difficult than the last. The snow reached past her knees, burying whatever trail they might have been following, and within minutes the chill seeped into her bones. All around them, trees leaned menacingly, hiding thick, treacherous roots beneath the snow that sent Brienne stumbling all too often. Occasionally, a loud crack tore through the air as a naked branch snapped under the weight of the snowfall and fell with vicious force to the forest floor.

He grabbed Brienne’s hand after the second close call with a falling branch and took the lead, pulling her out of the path of falling branches and hidden roots. There were no more close calls after that—or, at least, fewer of them. Aside from their slow steps and her heavy, muffled breathing, all was silent. All was still.

She was not afraid. She threaded her fingers through his and she was not afraid. She followed him through the snow and was not afraid.

They continued in silence for nearly an hour. Then, her curiosity bubbled over.

“What am I supposed to do with this sword?” she asked.

“There’s a woman at Winterfell who can explain it.”

“Is there enough time to get back to Winterfell?”

“Sure. If we keep moving.”

“And once I get there?”

“You ask _them_ all of your boring, pointless questions.”

She hesitated.

“Why—why now? I’ve been asking you to tell me what to do for weeks.”

“ _Because_ , you stubborn, ugly cow,” exasperation and derision and fondness permeated his words, “you were _sulking_ and it was _tedious_.”

For a few minutes, all Brienne could do was focus on was one foot after the other, each heaving breath costing more than the last.

“I can do this, you know,” she said at length. “Help them, I mean. The people you say I’ll find at Winterfell—whoever they are. At the very least, I… I can try.”

His answering eyeroll was the loudest thing for miles. “Very noble of you. What a brave wench I’ve found.”

Before Brienne could snipe back, he stopped in his tracks, yanking on her hand to pull her to a stop before him.

She placed her free palm on his chest to steady herself, and found herself distinctly _unsteadied_ by the agitated rise and fall of his chest beneath her gloved hand. By the tightness around his eyes; the fury she found there. By his nose, a hair’s breadth away from hers.

“You’ll probably die if you do this, you know,” he said. His hand was a vise around her own, his other hand burning a hole through the layers of wool and down and cotton that encased her elbow. “It’s nothing to me. But it might be something to you.”

She blinked. Opened her mouth as if to speak. Faltered.

“It’s not too late for us to turn around. There’s a cabin just a few miles southeast from here. The people who lived there are already dead. We head back to the car _right now_ and we can be there in no time at all. Pass the days in a much more enjoyable manner. I can take you to the other place before things become dire.”

Another blink. Another aborted attempt to say something, anything. Her heartbeat thundering in her ears. Was her heart supposed to beat this fast? Was it always this loud?

A growl ripped through his throat. “Fine. Obstinate _fool_. But, know this, Brienne: if you do this and you fail and _they_ take you—which they _will_ —there’ _s_ nothing I can do. We’re lost to each other. For—for good.” His eyes were pleading, roaming every inch of her face as if to commit it to memory. Brienne couldn’t speak.

There was no other choice. Maybe he wanted her to believe there was, or maybe there would have been, if she were anyone else. But she wasn’t.

He kept her hand in his as he turned around and pressed forward. “Start moving. We need to get to this sword before the old fucks in the trees decide to do something about my being here. I’ll never hear the end of it, you know. Your fault.”

∆ ∆ ∆

Finally— _finally_ , they stopped at the edge of a small clearing ringed by ancient, gnarled weirwood trees. Their faces, impassive and leaking crimson sap, gazed inward toward the center of the clearing.

“Here.” He barked. “In the center. Start digging, and be quick about it. I hate when these condescending shits watch me.”

“They can see you?” It surprised her.

“Obviously.” He wandered to a small snowbank just outside the clearing and dropped down, sprawling out as though it were the world’s most luxurious featherbed, though his demeanor was decidedly uneasy.

Brienne turned to one of the trees and ran a hand against the white bark, taking care to avoid the wizened face carved there, because it felt like an invasion of its—what? Privacy? Personal space? Did weirwood trees even care about that sort of thing? Was it sacrilegious to touch one in the first place?

“I’ve never seen one this old,” she breathed. “The ones that grew in the south were burned thousands of years ago. They only grow in botanical gardens, now, and those are—”

“Yes, yes,” he snapped, with more than a hint of possessiveness in his tone, “how special for you. I’m sure they’re humbled by your reverence.”

She fixed him with a withering look. He ignored her resolutely, instead electing to scowl at the horizon.

“Don’t be a jealous sod.” If there was the hint of a pleased smile on her face—well. He was too busy pouting to notice.

∆ ∆ ∆

The shovel made easy work of the first layers of snow, tearing through fresh and wind-pressed snow like they were nothing. Once she reached the ice and the frozen ground beneath it, Brienne’s mettle was put to the test. Her back ached, the muscles in her arms and legs screamed. More than once, she laid flat on the ground to ride out a dead arm or a leg cramp, only to stand back up again and dig, dig, dig.

 _He_ did nothing to help. Typical.

“This would go much faster if you’d get off your arse and _help me_.” She called out at one point, sweat-damp hair freezing against her forehead.

“Oh, it certainly would,” came his droll reply.

She rolled her eyes. Stood up. And kept digging.

Until, waist deep in the earth, her shovel hit— _something_. Brienne fell to her knees, ripped off her gloves and, with a manic fervor, she dug through the last few inches of soil with her bare hands.

She found what she was looking for: a bundle of cloth that might have once been red or pink, but was now mostly blackened by dirt and mold and rot.

Triumphant and exhausted, she climbed out of the hole she’d dug and placed the bundle on the ground. She began to unwrap the cloth; it disintegrated in her shaking, dirt-caked hands.

What was left was a sword in its scabbard.

It was heavy—much heavier than she’d expected. In the movies, the actors always swung them around like they weighed nothing.

The scabbard had once been beautiful, that much was obvious. Deep crimson leather, now cracked and water-stained, with gold accents of suns, moons, stars, and lions. Brienne exhaled slowly as she took it in, eyes traveling to the ornate lionhead pommel of the sheathed sword. She was overcome with the urge to unsheathe it, was about to do so until—he appeared at her shoulder.

“You found it. Fine.” She looked up at him, meeting his resigned grimace with a wide, rapturous grin. Crooked teeth and all.

The corners of his mouth quirked upward for half a second before his mouth twisted back into a moue of displeasure. His eyes, though—his eyes danced.

“Come on,” he sighed, “It’s hours to Winterfell, and from what these geriatric cocks told me while you dawdled, you’ve only a few days to learn how to use that thing.”

The walk back to her car was torturous, but even with the heavy weight of the sword and scabbard clasped in her hand, it flew by.

∆ ∆ ∆

Halfway to Winterfell, Brienne found herself hedging a question she’d wanted to ask since the day it became apparent that he would be sticking around.

“I need to ask you something,” she started, and found her throat dry, tongue heavy. She almost choked on the words.

One steadying breath. Another.

“When I called to you…”

All was silent from the passenger seat. She peeked at him, briefly, and found him watching the blizzard and road ahead. The muscles of his sharp jaw tense.

“Fuck’s sake. Out with it, wench. Before I put us both out of this misery.” He snapped.

“The reason I—I wanted to—know.” Haltingly. “What the point is. Of all of this.”

“You think there’s a point.” He laughed. Like it was a punchline and he’d beaten her to it.

“Ask a different question,” he said, “you won’t like the answer to that one.”

There was only one other question she wanted to ask. It died in her throat. She stared ahead, kept her hands steady on the steering wheel and the car moving forward.

Just as soon as she found herself lulled into some sort of calm by the low murmur of the music playing in the car, he spoke again, “Amusment is the point.”

She snorted. “So… what? Human existence is meant to be one long bacchanalia?”

“Not your amusement. Ours.” He reached across the center console to turn off the music. “We’ve been around since—well. _Since_. And all of this? The fucking, the fighting, the grief. Everything you’ve ever seen or will see, everything you feel and say and do. All of it—a whim. Nothing more to it than us having grown bored of toying with each other and choosing to toy with you creatures instead. We’re voyeurs who know how to work the loom that spits out the fabric of your existence. That’s all.”

Brienne turned her face to the cloth-covered ceiling for just a moment. She wanted to scream until her throat seized; she wanted someone to hear her.

“I had a feeling.”

“Have I dissuaded you from this madness? Are you ready to go? It really is hopeless, wench.”

She pressed her lips into a stubborn line. Shook her head—a quick, jerky movement. “No. Just because it’s like that for—you, doesn’t mean it’s like that for us. We deserve a chance. To make it mean something.”

He exhaled heavily through his nose. Sank down in his seat with arms folded over his chest.

“Ask me the other thing.”

“What?”

“You have another question. Ask me.”

She swallowed. “Why did you come when I called?”

“Not that one. Your real question.”

Brienne hesitated, mouth working silently.

Finally, “Why did you stay?” Soft. Scared, for the first time that night. She tried to watch both him and the road at the same time.

“There’s no sun in the other place,” he murmured, refusing to look at her. She wanted him to look at her.

“What?” she asked the front windshield.

Silence. A long one.

“I came when you called. You creatures—it doesn’t usually happen like that. You usually seek favor with one of the others. But you asked for me, and your voice was. Strong. So, I came to you. That part is simple.”

Another pause, this one shorter.

“I’ve seen—and I mean this literally—everything.” His voice was thick, maybe a little hoarse. She didn’t know what it meant. “But I’d never seen anything like your eyes in the sunlight. Then the world went dark. And I want to see your eyes in the sunlight again, Brienne. I do. So I brought you here, because it may be hopeless, but if there’s anyone on this earth who can make the sun rise again, it’s you.”

There were so many things she wanted, most of them things she could never have. But he was here. With her. That felt like more than enough.

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Enough, you wretched beast. Focus on the road.”

∆ ∆ ∆

She loved him.

She loved him, she loved him, she loved him.

∆ ∆ ∆

Outside the gates of Winterfell, she pulled the car to a slow stop. She unbuckled her seat belt and turned to face him. He met her gaze.

Their hands found each other in the dark, frantic.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me yet.” He inhaled, exhaled. Brought his other hand to her cheek. She leaned into his touch. “Once you go through those gates, Brienne, there’s little else I can do. I have no clue what happens next, or how. It’s on you and the other pathetic mugs in that rotting castle.”

Panic rose like bile in her throat. “You’re not—are you—you can’t _leave_ me—”

His laughter interrupted her. “I’m not going anywhere, wench. You really think I’d saddle you with a sword and a quest and send you on your way? Please.”

He pulled her face toward his, rested his forehead against hers. Closed his eyes like she was too bright to look at directly.

He squeezed her hand. Ran his fingers along her cheekbone. Softly, so softly. Tender.

“Let me kiss you.”

She wanted so badly to say yes. She said, “No.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Let me kiss you anyway.”

She smiled. He huffed.

“Don’t let them take you. Swear to me. If they get you, your eyes will turn an awful pale color and you’ll lose your one redeeming quality.”

She laughed, pulling away from him gently. “Fuck off.”

And then, “I won’t let them take me. I swear.”

The gates swung open with a great groan. A woman—a _girl_ walked out. She was small, with dark hair and wide eyes. She moved with a fluid grace. Like a sailboat cutting through calm waters. Or like the waters themselves, parting and coming back together in one motion.

She strolled up to the driver’s side of the car and knocked on the window. As Brienne rolled it down, she watched the girl first look over Brienne, head to hips, and then scan the inside of the car. Saw her eyes widen, ever so slightly, when she noticed the sword laid across the back seat.

“Who are you?” The girl asked, eyes locked on the sword.

“The gentle giantess, formerly of Tarth,” he interjected. The girl did not react. They never did. It was the best and worst thing about keeping his company: he was hers, and hers alone.

“I’m Brienne.” Her voice did not waver. That made her proud.

“I’m Arya,” the girl replied. “Well, pull in, then. The red twat said you’d be here.”

Brienne nodded and began to roll up the window.

“Hey, wait!” Arya threw a hand out, wrapped her fingers around the top of the half-closed window, eyes still fixed on the back seat. “You know what that is?” She jerked her chin in the direction of the sword.

Brienne shook her head.

“They called it Oathkeeper. Forged two, maybe three thousand years ago. Valyrian steel. That thing? That’s the thing that’s going to keep you alive.” Arya smiled, a feral twist of her lips. “Might even be the thing that keeps the rest of us alive, too—if you’re as good as me.”

“I’ve never… I don’t know how to use it.” Guiltily.

Arya’s smile widened; its edge was sharp. Lethal. “That’s all right. I’ll teach you. We’ll be dancing in no time at all.”

Brienne returned a grin of her own. Beside her, he snorted, but she heard the affectionate undercurrent.

She shifted into gear as Arya backed away from the car, and then pulled forward.

The gate swung shut behind the car and Arya. He reached out and squeezed Brienne’s hand on the steering wheel.

“There’s still time to turn around, Brienne. We can go to that cabin. Any cabin. Anywhere away from this.” His words lacked any real force—he knew she could not be swayed—but the intensity in his eyes was enough to make her breath stutter.

“No,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”

He sagged in his seat. Brienne held out her hand, palm facing up, and he laced his fingers through hers. They held each other’s gaze. One day, she would kiss him.

But not today.


End file.
